Casada to bring back oversight panels
NASHVILLE — Republican Glen Casada, the expected next speaker of the Tennessee House, said he wants to resurrect three legislative oversight panels that once served as vital watchdogs over “important issues.”
“[I]f the Senate wants to join us, we’d love them to join,” the Franklin representative said, adding that lawmakers should “re-create those committees that oversee children and families, prisons and TennCare for sure.”
Casada also said the move shouldn’t be interpreted as any kind of a challenge to Republican Gov.elect Bill Lee, who like Casada takes office in January.
“I would think he would welcome it, because his departments will do well, and we’re kind of partnering with him, with the governor,” Casada said, adding that’s “a good thing.”
Casada was nominated for the House speaker post by the 73-member Republican Caucus last month. That virtually ensures his election as speaker, given that Democrats only have 26 members. He would replace current Speaker Beth Harwell of Nashville who ran for governor, losing in the August GOP primary.
When running for the speaker
nomination, Casada, currently GOP majority leader, told fellow Republicans he wanted to re-establish a number of regular subcommittees that Harwell had eliminated.
But he had not talked publicly about restoring any of the oversight committees. The three oversight committees he wants to bring back were among 11 abolished back in 2011 as Republicans gained complete control of the General Assembly.
At the time, the new House speaker, Harwell, and Republican Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, the Senate speaker, persuaded members to oversight committees that Democratic leaders had created over the decades, often in painful response to having been blind-sided by embarrassing major crises, scandals, federal court rulings or all of the above affecting the executive branch.
Ramsey and Harwell said the panels were unnecessary and the work could be done in regular Senate and House standing committees. Eliminating the joint panels would save some $850,000 a year, largely through reduced staff, Ramsey said at the time.
Previous generations of lawmakers had created many of the oversight panels as proactive responses to make members knowledgeable and be in a position to understand what governors were doing in policy and practice in departments, sometimes demanding input and keeping an eye out for problems.
For example, the Select Oversight Committee on Corrections was established in law by the General Assembly back in 1985 after rioting erupted at long-troubled state prisons, already found by a federal judge to have unconstitutional conditions and practices that amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.
The Select Oversight Committee on Children and Youth also was created in response to federal court orders. And the TennCare Oversight Committee kept abreast with a program that provides health services to some 1.3 million low-income families and children, as well as some disabled and elderly Tennesseans.
Four years after the Correction Oversight Committee was abolished, the state Department of Correction and lawmakers were rocked by prison guard resignations over low pay and new work schedules plus embarrassing disturbances at several facilities.
Guards had warned about staff shortages and dangerous conditions leading to increased assaults on them by inmates. And the assaults weren’t being properly classified, guards charged.
Leaders of the Haslam administration’s Correction Department sought to downplay or even deny there were serious problems. Senators held hearings and the American Correctional Association was brought in to review practices. The independent group issued a critical report of departmental practices that led to changes. Later, the department’s commissioner left.
The Department of Children’s Services has had its controversies, as has TennCare.
Casada said he doesn’t intend to hire additional legislative staff for the oversight panels, arguing existing analysts, researchers and attorneys should be able to accommodate the work because most meetings will take place when the General Assembly is not in session.
Re-assembling the joint House and Senate oversight committees — which were established through now-repealed state laws — would require senators’ approval.
Ramsey has since been succeeded as Senate speaker by Republican Randy McNally of Oak Ridge. In Tennessee, the Senate speaker also has the title of lieutenant governor.
“Lt. Governor McNally has yet to hear from Speaker-nominee Casada on this issue,” McNally spokesman Adam Kleinheider said in a statement.
Kleinheider said in response to other questions about how oversight has been conducted in the Senate that “the nine standing committees retain ultimate oversight authority in their subject matter areas.
“That oversight authority is often exercised through the use of subcommittees, including the State and Local Committee’s Correction Subcommittee, Senate Finance’s Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee and Senate Health and Welfare’s Tenncare Oversight Subcommittee,” Kleinheider added.
Casada said if the Senate isn’t interested in re-establishing joint oversight panels, the House will move on its own. When Harwell became speaker, she also eliminated a number of subcommittees in regular standing committees. Casada said he will re-establish a number of them because that’s often where the real work in the legislature is done, with the smaller panels able to get deeper into issues.
Casada said he isn’t being critical of Harwell, noting “at that time it was probably a good thing. But the times and things have become complex. Education is very complex. So is health care, much more than it was eight years ago.”
He noted that requires “subject experts” and creating additional subcommittees will lead to that.
“I can see us going to two if not three subcommittees on the major committees, like education, like health,” he said, noting he and staff are still reviewing details and he doesn’t know how many total subcommittees will be created in the House.
“We’re doing a kind of top to bottom look at what full committees we need and what subcommittees do we need,” he noted.
Casada said legislators are constantly getting calls from their constituents and “just have questions” in any areas of government “about why or how or why not” regarding actions, policies and perceived problems.
“And so it’s nothing negative,” Casada said, “it’s just the more eyes that are on the operations of government, the better.”